Internet

In 1878, Christopher Sholes was granted the patent on the QWERTY keyboard layout. He’d been granted the patent on the typewriter in 1868, 10 years earlier. His original typewriter had problems with tangling mechanical keys and the QWERTY keyboard was his solution to broken keyboards and frustrated typists. The QWERTY keyboard favored left-handed typists (at a time when most technology favored right-handed users) and placed less commonly used letters under a typists resting fingers. Sholes, thinking very much like a founder who wanted to sell a lot of product, ensured

I am a web developer. I am not disabled. I live in the United States. I use modern technology and devices on a daily basis. Yet, often I can’t use modern sites and web apps the way they were intended to be used. At least a few times per week — as a regular consumer of modern digital technology — I’m roadblocked. Web applications show blank white screens and won’t render anything at all due do a bug. Slow 4G internet immobilizing the normal web browsing experience. JavaScript errors cause buttons not to function